Stanford University

Food Markets

Biofuels: The changing nature of agricultural demand

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Policies promoting ethanol and biodiesel production and use in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world since the mid-2000s have had profound—and largely unintended—consequences on global food prices, agricultural land values, land acquisition, and food security in developing countries. They have also created regional opportunities in the form of agricultural investments, crop yield growth, and booming farm economies. Rising incomes in emerging economies are generating increased demand for transportation fuels, thus stimulating further growth of the global biofuel industry. This seminar will explore the politics, economics, and global food security implications of the expanding biofuel sector. Several policy questions will be raised, including the role of biofuel mandates on food prices, the role of trade policies for stabilizing food prices in an era of increasingly tight demand, and the role of land policies and institutions for feedstock production and income distribution in the developing world.

Siwa Msangi, Senior Research Fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) will provide commentary. Msangi's work focuses on the major socio-economic and bio-physical drivers affecting agricultural production and trade, and their impacts on nutrition, poverty and the environment. Dr. Msangi manages a research portfolio that includes the economic and environmental implications of biofuels, and has coordinated the project Biofuels and the Poor in partnership with FSE.  

Biofuels videos: Roz Naylor talks food security and energy with Near Zero

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Rosamond L. Naylor

The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-5697 (650) 725-1992
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Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Roz_low_res_9_11_cropped.jpg
PhD

Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security. 

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Siwa Msangi Senior Research Fellow Commentator International Food Policy Research Institute
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Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

Managing price volatility: Approaches at the global, national, and household levels

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This paper serves as background to the fourth presentation in a Symposium Series on Global Food Policy and Food Security hosted by the Center on Food Security and Environment at Stanford University and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Political dynamics, not economic analysis, drive the domestic policy response to sharply rising food prices. The political objective during a food price crisis is almost always to keep it from happening. In the short run, this means “stabilizing” domestic food prices despite whatever is happening in world markets. Stabilizing domestic food prices in the face of sharply escalating world prices is not a foolish goal—most countries try to do it. The real issue is whether this can be done effectively and efficiently. The answer is always “no” unless the country has planned well ahead for such a contingency and already has an operational food price stabilization program in place. 

As a matter of “good practice,” all countries are discouraged by international donors from conducting such programs. Instead, countries are urged to implement “social” safety nets in times of food price spikes. The economic rationale is clear: let market prices signal the scarcity of food resources so that supply and demand can adjust, and then compensate the poor for deterioration in their standard of living when food prices rise. The problem is that safety nets that reach the poor quickly and effectively take considerable time to design and implement, and are quite costly in fiscal terms if the poor are a substantial share of the total population. Historically, unless the country is already running a cash transfer program to the poor, the emergence of a food price crisis is too sudden for an effective government response. Gearing up emergency food relief safety nets is not an effective response to a sudden spike in food prices.

More active measures to prevent food price spikes are needed, both domestically and internationally. One starting point would be for countries with large populations to gradually build their grain reserves to the point where they do not feel vulnerable to spikes in world prices and to possible grain embargoes from their regular suppliers. It would be desirable to have such stockholding strategies coordinated internationally, but this is unlikely in other than rhetorical terms. Still, the mere existence of these stocks, even if domestically controlled, would have a calming influence on world grain markets (especially on the very thin world rice market). With calmer markets, recourse to more open trade policies becomes politically feasible (and it is almost always economically desirable). Eventually, the reality of the high costs of grain storage will stimulate a more balanced approach to food security, with both reserves and trade playing significant roles.

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Aspen Environment Forum

FSE director Roz Naylor discussant in three panels at the 2011 Aspen Environment Forum, a conference sponsored by the Aspen Institute and National Geographic. Follow the conference on Twitter, @AspenInstitute and @NatGeoGreen, or via #aef2011. National Geographic will be posting daily blogs on ngm.com/aspen.

Tuesday, May 31:

Peak Planet

Population boomed in the 20th century mostly because public health and sanitation measures saved lives—but keeping those people alive and enriching many of them required an unprecedented boom in our ability to extract resources from the Earth. The debate about “peak oil” has loomed over us for decades, but other mineral resources may be nearing peaks as well. Platinum and other metals, phosphate for fertilizer, and just plain dirt—that is, fertile topsoil—have all been mentioned as approaching scarcity. Which of these resources is likely to become a real constraint on human development, and how soon?

Discussants: Marcia McNutt, Daniel Kammen, Roz Naylor, Andrew Revkin
Moderator: Elliot Gerson 

Can Science Feed the World?

Growing enough food in decades ahead at an acceptable cost to the planet will depend on research into everything from high-tech seeds to low-tech farming practices. Scientists increasingly see a critical role for “sustainable intensification,” an approach to producing more food from the same land with fewer inputs of energy and water, and at the same time reducing the negative environmental impacts that already occur. Where is this happening now and what can be learned from our attempts, and how can this be achieved at larger scale?

Discussants: Jerry Glover, Roz Naylor, Paul E. Schickler 
Moderator: Tim Appenzeller

Wednesday, June 1:

The Revolution We Need in Food Security and Population

The second global food crisis in three years is upon us – with bad weather, poor harvests and political turmoil sending food prices soaring to all-time highs. At the same time, the planet’s population is set to surpass seven billion this year, with most of the growth occurring in countries least equipped to meet the rising demands on agriculture and the environment. Experts predict that global food production must increase by 70 percent by mid-century to keep pace with current rates of growth. Join experts and policymakers for a discussion on these trends and the policies and programs needed to create lasting development and food security, including meeting the reproductive health needs of the growing world population.

Introduction: Dennis Dimick
Discussants: Dan Glickman, Roger-Mark De Souza, Roz Naylor, John Foley 
Moderator: Elliot Gerson

Aspen Institute, Aspen CO

Rosamond L. Naylor

The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-5697 (650) 725-1992
0
Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Roz_low_res_9_11_cropped.jpg
PhD

Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security. 

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Scientists identify new implications of perennial bioenergy crops

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David Lobell
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A team of researchers from Stanford University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Arizona State University has found that converting large swaths of land to bioenergy crops could have a wide range of effects on regional climate.

In an effort to help wean itself off fossil fuels, the U.S. has mandated significant increases in renewable fuels, with more than one-third of the domestic corn harvest to be used for conversion to ethanol by 2018. But concerns about effects of corn ethanol on food prices and deforestation had led to research suggesting that ethanol be derived from perennial crops, like the giant grasses Miscanthus and switchgrass. Nearly all of this research, though, has focused on the effects of ethanol on carbon dioxide emissions, which drive global warming.

"Almost all of the work performed to date has focused on the carbon effects," said Matei Georgescu, a climate modeler working in ASU's Center for Environmental Fluid Dynamics. "We've tried to expand our perspective to look at a more complete picture.  What we've shown is that it's not all about greenhouse gases, and that modifying the landscape can be just as important."

Georgescu and his colleagues report their findings in the current issue (Feb. 28, 2011) of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (see Direct Climate Effects of Perennial Bioenergy Crops in the United States). Co-authors are David Lobell of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment and Christopher B. Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science, also located in Stanford, California.

In their study, the researchers simulated an entire growing season with a state-of-the-art regional climate model. They ran two sets of experiments - one with an annual crop representation over the central U.S. and one with an extended growing season to represent perennial grasses. In the model, the perennial plants pumped more water from the soil to the atmosphere, leading to large local cooling. 

"We've shown that planting perennial bioenergy crops can lower surface temperatures by about a degree Celsius locally, averaged over the entire growing season. That's a pretty big effect, enough to dominate any effects of carbon savings on the regional climate." said Lobell.

The primary physical process at work is based on greater evapotranspiration (combination of evaporated water from the soil surface and plant canopy and transpired water from within the soil) for perennial crops compared to annual crops. 

"More study is needed to understand the long-term implication for regional water balance." Georgescu said. "This study focused on temperature, but the more general point is that simply assessing the impacts on carbon and greenhouse gases overlooks important features that we cannot ignore if we want a bioenergy path that is sustainable over the long haul."

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Managing Food Price Volatility: Approaches at the Global, National and Household Levels

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What does price instability have to do with food security? Price spikes hurt poor consumers, price collapses hurt farmers, and price risks reduce investment. Timmer's work suggests that food price instability also has a deeper and more insidious impact: it slows down economic growth and the structural transformation that is the pathway out of rural poverty. Food price instability really hurts the poor in both the short run and the long run.

"Food security is not a viable social objective unless it is also a profitable undertaking for input suppliers, farmers, and marketers of output. Consumers must then be able to afford to purchase this food, secure in the knowledge that it is safe and nutritious. Achieving food security within these constraints of a complex economic system is a challenge because both poor consumers and small farmers must be effective participants."                                     -- Peter Timmer

Thom Jayne, Professor of International Development at Michigan State University, will join the conversation as a discussant following the main presentation. 

Biography

C. Peter Timmer is a leading authority on agriculture and rural development who has published widely on these topics. He has served as a professor at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A core advisor on the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, Timmer also works with several Asian governments on domestic policy responses to instability in the global rice market. He is an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development issues.

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Peter Timmer

Center on Food Security and the Environment
Encina Hall East, E400
Stanford, CA 94305

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Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, Harvard University
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C. Peter Timmer was a visiting professor at Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment in 2007. He is a leading authority on agriculture and rural development who has published widely on these topics. He has served as a professor at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A core advisor on the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, Timmer also works with several Asian governments on domestic policy responses to instability in the global rice market. In 1992, he received the Bintang Jasa Utama (Highest Merit Star) from the Republic of Indonesia for his contributions to food security. He is an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development issues.

Timmer's work focuses on three broad topics: the nature of "pro-poor growth" and its application in Indonesia and other countries in Asia; the supermarket revolution in developing countries and its impact on the poor (both producers and consumers); and the structural transformation in historical perspective as a framework for understanding the political economy of agricultural policy. 

Peter Timmer Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, at Harvard University Speaker
Thom Jayne Professor of International Development Commentator Michigan State University
Symposiums
Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

Food Security in an Era of Economic Volatility

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The recent upheavals in staple food prices, financial markets, and the global economy raise questions about the state of food insecurity, the nature of price variability, and the appropriate strategies for international agricultural development. For decades preceding this turmoil, agriculture had received waning attention from the global development community as real food prices declined on trend. Analysts who worried about food insecurity focused on the fate of poor producers. The dramatic upswing in prices in 2007-08 turned attention toward poor consumers as many countries struggled with food riots, mounting malnutrition, and the adoption of grain self-sufficiency policies. New debates have been spurred over whether real agricultural prices will resume their long downward decline or whether there has been a more general reversal in the real price of food.

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Trading carbon for food: Global comparison of carbon stocks vs. crop yields on agricultural land

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Expanding croplands to meet the needs of a growing population, changing diets, and biofuel production comes at the cost of reduced carbon stocks in natural vegetation and soils. Here, we present a spatially explicit global analysis of tradeoffs between carbon stocks and current crop yields. The difference among regions is striking. For example, for each unit of land cleared, the tropics lose nearly two times as much carbon (∼120 tons·ha-1 vs. ∼63 tons·ha-1) and produce less than one-half the annual crop yield compared with temperate regions (1.71 tons·ha-1·y-1 vs. 3.84 tons·ha-1·y-1). Therefore, newly cleared land in the tropics releases nearly 3 tons of carbon for every 1 ton of annual crop yield compared with a similar area cleared in the temperate zone. By factoring crop yield into the analysis, we specify the tradeoff between carbon stocks and crops for all areas where crops are currently grown and thereby, substantially enhance the spatial resolution relative to previous regional estimates. Particularly in the tropics, emphasis should be placed on increasing yields on existing croplands rather than clearing new lands. Our high-resolution approach can be used to determine the net effect of local land use decisions.

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Holly Gibbs
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FSE director Roz Naylor delivers lecture on 'The Battle Over Biofuels' as part of University of Washington's 2010 Food Series

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Her talk asks has the biofuels boom subsided, or are the battles just beginning? Is ethanol and biodiesel production compatible with the broader goals of feeding the world and saving wild biodiversity? Rosamond L. Naylor explores the political, economic, and scientific trade-offs behind the global expansion of crop-based biofuels.
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